Open access fibre network provider Frogfoot Networks is looking to connect up to 21 000 homes in Bloemfontein.
“As a small city in the middle of the country, Bloemfontein is often easily overlooked in terms of its connectivity and bandwidth requirements,” says Llewelyn Hofmeyr, chief operations officer at Frogfoot, who happens to have grown up in Bloem himself.
“However, our strategy has been to bring fibre to areas which have previously been underserviced. We recognised their need for fibre, and saw it as an opportunity to expand our footprint.”
In January, the company announced it was extending its fibre infrastructure rollout to Polokwane.
Shortly after entering the fibre industry, Hofmeyr was involved in a metro project in Bloemfontein to roll out fibre to cellphone towers for the mobile industry.
Hofmeyr says it was here that he realised how underserviced tier two towns and cities in SA were, and that it would take a while for fibre networks in these areas to become a reality.
Frogfoot began its build in Langenhoven Park in April 2018, with the first zones going live in early September of the same year.
The company says Bloemfontein’s appetite for high-speed fibre was evident in the uptake, with over half of the homes passed opting to get connected.
To date, over 460km of fibre has been laid, with the network passing (has the potential to connect) over 21 000 homes, including those located inside precincts and complexes, says the fibre provider.
“As we progressed with our expansion through the city, we found an increased interest in fibre. Our biggest growth was seen in March and April this year, with the national lockdown resulting in an influx of orders as more people started working from home,” says Hofmeyr.
“If anything, the national lockdown has shown the importance of having access to reliable, high-speed Internet, and it is no different when it comes to the smaller cities and towns that lie beyond South Africa’s major urban centres. This is backed up by the demand that Frogfoot Networks, a licensed open-access fibre network provider, has noticed when rolling out its infrastructure in Bloemfontein.”
The company says fibre provides the community with a cost-effective and reliable connection to the Internet, providing superfast download speeds for quicker Web browsing and seamless on-demand video streaming.
It notes that lower latency makes it better for online gaming; and more recently, it has enabled people to work and learn from home, whether through video-conferencing or specialised applications.
As part of the efforts to help tackle COVID-19, Frogfoot announced a doubling of line speeds for customers, for a limited period of time.
It says what is seen is that customers with a better connection tend to use the Internet more: customers who were on 10Mbps and 20Mbps lines, and had their line speeds doubled, consumed up to 30% more data than usual.
“We launched a successful double-up campaign in April. We have found the overwhelming trend is that many of these customers are happy to continue their upgraded line speed. People understand the benefit of a reliable connection to the Internet and that fibre is the medium to meet today’s data-hungry world,” explains Hofmeyr.
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